Unrepentant to the last, Zacarias Moussaoui engaged in one final emotional exchange with relatives of the September 11 victims yesterday, taunting them that America had lost and would never capture Osama bin Laden.

But he was silenced swiftly by the judge, who brought his marathon trial to a close when she sentenced him to life without parole.

Last night the self-confessed al-Qa'eda conspirator was on his way to join America's most infamous criminals, including the "shoe bomber" Richard Reid, in a maximum security prison known as the "Alcatraz of Colorado".

Related Articles

There he will be held in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day 60ft underground in an 8ft by 5ft cell.

Judge Leonie Brinkema, who presided over his trial at a federal courthouse in Alexandria, firmly rejected his claim that he had won, making clear that his six life terms in one of America's notorious "supermax" prisons was a hideous way to spend the rest of his life.

"Mr Moussaoui, when this proceeding is over, everyone else in this room will leave to see the sun. . . hear the birds. . . and they can associate with whomever they want," she said. "You will spend the rest of your life in a supermax prison. It's absolutely clear who won.

"You came here to be a martyr in a big bang of glory. But to paraphrase the poet T S Eliot, instead you will die with a whimper."

As the Moroccan-born French Islamist tried to interrupt her - as he has done endlessly in the more than four years of court proceedings - she raised her voice and said: "You will never get a chance to speak again and that's an appropriate ending."

Her remarks came moments after one of the most dramatic exchanges yet in the trial that climaxed on Wednesday night, when a jury defied widespread expectation and decided that he should not be executed for conspiracy in the September 11 attacks.

As Moussaoui, 37, gazed around the court, Rosemary Dillard, whose husband was a passenger on one of the four hijacked aircraft, spoke for many in America as she recalled that day.

"I want you Mr Moussaoui to know how you've wrecked my life. You took the most important person in my life. We've all watched you twiddle your beard and make faces with no remorse," she said.

"I hope you sit in jail without the sky, without the sun, without any contact with the outside world. I hope your name is never mentioned in the newspapers again."

Her denunciation clearly had no effect on the only man to have been tried in America in connection with the attacks on New York and Washington.

"You have branded me as a terrorist or a criminal or whatever," he told the court. "Look at yourselves. I fight for my belief. As long as you don't hear, America, you will feel.

"God curse America. God save Osama bin Laden. You will never get him."

If the American justice system has its way those will be the last words anyone will hear from Moussaoui. In his cell in America's most secure and hi-tech prison, in Florence, Colorado, he will have no contact with his fellow prisoners.

While his sentence is not open to appeal, his mother, Aisha el Wafi, has launched a campaign to have him repatriated from America to serve his sentence in a French prison.

She said her son would be living like a "rat in a hole" and accused France of siding with America in the trial.

"My son will be buried alive because France didn't dare contradict the Americans," she said in Paris.

Moussaoui escaped the death penalty when the jury found that his failure to alert interrogators to the September 11 plot had not led to the deaths of almost 3,000 people.

It has emerged that the jury rejected two of the principal defence arguments - that Moussaoui is mentally unstable, and that executing him would make him a martyr.